Pakistan creates its own enemy

A war that can’t be won

The current area of concern for the US, and the world, is the zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan where porous borders allow the free passage of conflicts. The US is pressuring Pakistan to achieve through military means what it has itself failed to do in Afghanistan; and since Pakistan has fewer resources and a larger territory, this can only multiply the problems

by Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

On the day I arrived in Peshawar last month, the evening stillness was broken by nine loud explosions, each preceded by the sucking sound of a projectile as it arced into Hayatabad, the suburban sprawl west of the city. Their target was a Frontier Constabulary post guarding the fence that separates the city from the tribal region of Khyber.

When I lived here seven years ago, Hayatabad hosted many Afghan refugees; those with fewer resources lived in the slums of Kacha Garhi, along the Jamrud Road to the Khyber Pass. Many established businesses here, and dominated commerce and transport in parts of the city. Some temporarily migrated in summer to Afghanistan, where it was cooler. But Peshawar was a sanctuary, as Afghanistan was perpetually at war. Now, many Afghans are leaving because Afghanistan feels safer. There are checkpoints all over the city, many kidnappings, and in the past month, there have been at least three suicide bombings and four rocket attacks, most targeting Hayatabad.

This war began in 2002 under intense US pressure, with piecemeal military action in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a semi-autonomous region of seven agencies along Pakistan’s north-western border. The Afghan Taliban were using the region to regroup after their earlier rout: veteran anti-Soviet commander Jalaluddin Haqqani headquartered his network in North Waziristan; Gulbuddin Hikmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami had a presence in Bajaur. However, the military, reluctant to take on pro-Pakistan Afghans, whom the government sees as assets against growing Indian influence in Afghanistan, instead marched into South Waziristan to apprehend “foreigners” (mainly Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs). Following the regional code of honour, the tribes refused to surrender the guests and were subjected to collective punishment that soon united them against the government. Disparate militant groups coalesced into the Pakistani Taliban, distinct from and less disciplined than its Afghan counterpart. Ineffectual tribal elders were marginalised or assassinated. The leadership shifted to individuals such as Nek Muhammad, 27, a charismatic veteran of the Afghan war, a sworn enemy of the US presence in Afghanistan.

A gulf created

Although FATA had been a transit base for rebels and weaponry during the anti-Soviet struggle, this did not undermine the tribal structures or the political administration. There were no insurgents, according to Rustam Shah Mohmand, an astute analyst of frontier politics, “because the policy of the government and the aspirations of the people converged”. He suggests three causes for the present impasse: President Pervaiz Musharraf’s decision in 2001 to join the US “war on terror”; the use of indiscriminate force to support what was seen as an American war; and the disappearances and rendition of suspects, many innocents among them, given into US custody for compensation.

These combined to create a gulf between public opinion and government policy, and in 2002 led to the protest vote that brought the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA, an alliance of religious parties opposed to the “war on terror”) to power in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The evisceration of established institutions, particularly the office of the Political Agent, which since the days of the Raj had served as the federal government’s liaison with the tribal maliks (chiefs), worsened the insecurity. Traditional tribal structures and the concept of regional responsibility also suffered.

In 2004, after two attempts on Musharraf’s life, the government ordered 5,000 troops supported by helicopter gunships into South Waziristan. The military suffered heavy losses and the government was forced to sign a peace treaty with Nek Mohammad that briefly ended hostilities. The ceasefire broke when, on 18 June 2004, the young amir was assassinated in a US drone strike for which, in the first of many such incidents, the Pakistani government claimed responsibility, rather than admit its sovereignty had been breached by the US. Two more peace deals followed, but both ended when in August 2007 Pakistani forces stormed a mosque in Islamabad held by militants sympathetic to the Taliban, an operation that killed many innocents. A sustained terrorist campaign followed, and the blowback began to hit Pakistan’s major cities. In response, the military expanded its operations into other agencies including Bajaur, Mohmand and Khyber. The fighting was intense, and neither side gave quarter. Millions were displaced, and anger against the government grew.

Phantom enemy

On the bus to Peshawar I’d met a youth, studying English literature at the University of Punjab, who was returning home to evacuate his family from the Khyber Agency. I asked him who the Taliban were, and he replied dryly “we all are”. A taxi driver showed me the flood of refugees from Khyber’s Bara region, and said the Taliban were a “phantom enemy” invented by the Pakistani establishment to justify foreign aid. He warned the government’s actions were actually creating the enemy that it claims it is at war with.

Around the time of the mosque siege the war also spilled into the mainland. Tensions had simmered since 2007 in Malakand’s Swat valley and culminated in the Pakistan army’s incursion this year into the region. The operation followed the failure of a peace settlement, the Nizam-e-Adl, that the government had signed with the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), a local movement committed to the restoration of the region’s old legal order. Until the early 1970s, the three districts of Malakand – Swat, Dir and Chitral — were independent princely states, each with its own legal system — in Swat, a variant of sharia. Following Swat’s accession to Pakistan, the old system was superseded by Pakistan’s legal framework; however, no legal infrastructure evolved to cope with the change. Cases languished in district courts and justice was often indefinitely postponed. From the late 1970s on, this led to calls for the restoration of the old order, and in 1989 Sufi Muhammad established TNSM to formally pursue this cause.

The movement twice took up arms in the 1990s, but the governments of Benazir Bhutto (1994) and Nawaz Sharif (1999) made concessions to defuse hostilities. However, by 2002 the TNSM had all but disappeared after Sufi Muhammad led a contingent of 10,000 men into Afghanistan to fight US forces, most of whom were killed or captured. Sufi Muhammad’s credibility suffered and on his return he was whisked off to a prison in Dera Ismail Khan.

In 2005 Muhammad’s son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, was able to revive TNSM, with a more radical edge. The group was further strengthened by the arrival of militants fleeing US drone attacks in FATA. After the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan, TTP) was established in December 2007 with Baitullah Mehsud as its leader, Mullah Fazlullah changed his organisation into a local chapter of the movement. With its populist rhetoric, its swift justice and opposition to the old feudal elite, it found favour with the underclass and attracted many disaffected youths. This, observed Asif Ezdi, a political analyst, was “because the state has failed [the youth], massively and comprehensively: the wellspring of Islamic militancy in Pakistan is to be found in the alienation of the mass of the population by a ruling elite that has used the state to protect and expand its own privileges, pushing the common man into deeper and deeper poverty and hopelessness”.

Rule of justice

With unemployment, easy access to weaponry and training, and rising political consciousness because of a vibrant private media, there was no shortage of angry young men to swell the Taliban ranks, especially when the war was also seen as a struggle against the entrenched elite. “In some areas at least, it has pitted landless tenants against wealthy landlords,” Ezdi notes (1). This, he says, was “in a country where ordinary people have little chance of overcoming status barriers, with the government, the political system and the elite all arrayed against them. It is this combination of revolutionary and religious zeal which makes the Taliban such a formidable force”.

However, as more power accrued to the TTP, petty criminals also joined. This not only granted them immunity from the Taliban’s brutal justice, but access to weapons and a powerful support network. They used these immediately, terrorising rivals and ordinary people alike. Following their own narrow interpretation of Islam, they banned female education; more than a hundred schools were bombed. Whatever initial support the Swat Taliban had enjoyed evaporated quickly; even the TTP dissented when its spokesman Maulvi Omar urged Fazlullah to reconsider the decision to ban girls’ education.

Eager to check the growing power of the TTP, in 2008 the Pashtun nationalist government of NWFP released Sufi Muhammad, who had renounced violence, to negotiate peace with the militants. These efforts culminated in the Nizam-e-Adl (rule of justice) legislation of February 2009, which briefly ended hostilities after the government agreed to establish sharia courts and the militants agreed to disarm. After much delay, the legislation was ratified by the central government on 14 April 2009 and, although both sides failed fully to meet obligations, some normalcy briefly returned to the valley.

Western commentators and their local allies were quick to denounce the legislation as Pakistan’s “surrender to the Taliban”. The country, they said, was on the verge of collapse, its nuclear arsenal about to land into the hands of the Taliban, who were within 60 miles of the capital. Pressure mounted on the Pakistani government and in May, when a group of TTP militants rode motorbikes into the neighbouring Buner valley, the incident was presented by the media as a prelude to a march on the capital. The tanks rolled.

While the operation succeeded in dislodging the militants, nearly three million citizens were displaced, and of those who remained, many were killed in the bombing of civilian neighbourhoods. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) declared it the worst refugee crisis since Rwanda, and the capacity of the international aid organisations was seriously stretched. More than 80% of the refugees were absorbed by families, friends and well-wishers; the UNHCR conceded it was only able to provide 33% of the relief assistance needed for the rest. The Pakistani government failed to provide assistance and much of the foreign aid money lined the pockets of corrupt officials. The unaffected eastern provinces of Sindh and Punjab restricted entry to the refugees; this highlighted the ethnic dimension of the conflict, since the Pashtuns see themselves as primary targets.

Yet, unlike the military operations in FATA, the operation enjoyed relatively high popular support among Pakistanis (41%). It was hailed as a success by politicians, the military and the media.

Everybody recognised that it was imperative to counter militancy and criminality in Malakand but not all agreed that force was the only way to do it. “I think [the war] was avoidable,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist and the most respected analyst of frontier politics, “but Pakistan is not a free and independent player. There was much pressure from the US and other countries, and for a variety of reasons the government couldn’t resist.”

Yusufzai dismisses the idea that the militants were a threat to the country or its nuclear assets. “The government itself is saying that there were no more than 5,000 Taliban; they were controlling Swat, they had entered Buner — how many men could they have spared to march on the capital?” Pakistan is a country of 173 million, with a million under arms and an advanced air force. “The Taliban had neither the capacity nor the intention to invade the capital. They were only interested in the Malakand division, and even there their influence was limited to three of its seven districts.” The Nizam-e-Adl encompassed the same concessions that two previous, secular governments had made, and Sufi Muhammad’s influence could have defused hostilities and marginalised the radicals.

Roedad Khan, a former federal secretary and political commentator, queries whether all political options had been exhausted. “There never was a more unnecessary war... a war more difficult to justify and harder to win. No one can be bombed into moderation and, given the unconventional methods of the insurgents, force alone has a slim chance of success since the militant doesn’t have to win, he just has to keep fighting.”

Mohmand has questions. “If the aim of the operation was to confront the elements challenging the writ of the state, it should have targeted only them. Why did the government have to invade the whole territory? By using air power and indiscriminate bombardment the government ensured that common people would suffer.” Although the government has declared victory in Swat, he argued, the success could prove pyrrhic if “the social, economic and political causes that led to the emergence of the Taliban are not addressed and comprehensive reconstruction doesn’t follow”.

Tribe against tribe

In yet another act of political myopia, Pakistan diminished its options when in September it invited members of the Taliban shura (advisory committee) for negotiations and then arrested them. The policy of arming militias to counter the Taliban (along the lines of the Iraqi “awakening councils”) is equally dangerous. In a region where blood feuds last for generations, Yusufzai notes, this means perpetual violence, pitting tribe against tribe. The government’s policy of home demolitions ignores the fact that in the frontier region a single house is shared by an extended family, and when a home is demolished for the sins of an errant son, the state creates more recruits for the insurgency.

An uneasy peace prevails in Swat today, and militant violence has declined. However, more than 200 suspected militants and sympathisers have been killed in extra-judicial executions by security forces and local vigilantes since the end of major combat operations. The population remains in a permanent state of fear: “If, earlier, people were terrorised by the Taliban, today they live in fear of the army,” says Yusufzai. “Anybody can be labelled a Talib”, he notes; some locals have chosen to settle scores by falsely accusing rivals of being Taliban sympathisers. “Your house is then demolished, you are taken into custody, and next day your body is found dumped in a field. People are very scared, they are afraid to talk, and the media” — which mostly cheered on the military — “is compromised.”

The Taliban attacks continued, accelerating in October in anticipation of the new military incursion in South Waziristan. Under the leadership of Hakimullah Mehsud, 28, a campaign of bombings began which, with calculated cruelty, hit targets in Hangu, Kohat, Shangla and Peshawar, killing mostly civilians. The attacks got more audacious as the government escalated the aerial bombing ahead of the ground invasion. Punjabi allies of the Taliban even managed a successful attack on military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Pakistan’s vulnerability became even clearer when a wave of attacks hit the heavily fortified capital.

Meanwhile the US drone attacks in the FATA region continue. Of 701 citizens killed in 60 strikes between 29 January 2008 and 8 April 2009, only 14 were suspected militants according to one investigation; the brunt is borne by civilians. Public opinion is incensed: according to an August 2009 Gallup poll, 59% of Pakistanis see the US as the biggest threat, compared with 18% for traditional rival India. Only 11% see the Taliban as the biggest threat (although that number is growing). While the poll also revealed 41% support for the military operation in Swat, a higher number (43%) favoured a political resolution. The insecurities of the Pakistani defence establishment are worsened by US assistance to India, including the transfer of advanced military and nuclear technology.

With the inducement of aid dollars, Pakistan with its poorly equipped army is trying to achieve what the US and Nato have failed to accomplish in Afghanistan. But the longer the military operations continue the more regions are likely to slip from under its control as the numbers of the aggrieved multiply, the military stretches thin and vulnerabilities increase. Already the insurgency has spread to parts of Punjab. Yet a form of military metaphysics prevails among the Pakistani elite and western commentators, who continue to hope that militancy can be bombed out of existence. Anti-war voices are denounced as Taliban sympathisers.

Odd time for war

This affinity for war is odd at a time when the Washington consensus on the good war is crumbling; Nato allies are having second thoughts. Although neoconservatives from the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) have tried to denounce this disenchantment with war as lack of resolve in the fight against global terrorism, what they fear is that withdrawal from Afghanistan would reduce the chances of a future attack on Iran. Equally wrong is the argument that Afghanistan could turn into a safe haven for terrorists should western forces withdraw. The political scientist Stephen Walt sees this argument as propaganda. The last thing any Afghan government would want is to give western powers another excuse to invade and occupy; and most terrorist attacks against western targets have been planned in the West (2).

The recent entry of 28,000 Pakistani troops into South Waziristan has precipitated yet another mass exodus; a third of the population has been displaced. Though the Pakistani Taliban have few supporters left, Associated Press (AP) found refugees venting their anger at the government with chants of “Long live the Taliban”. Instead of winning hearts and minds, the government is delivering them to the enemy. If the Pakistani Taliban are disliked, the government is disliked more. Despite the best efforts of the elite to take ownership of the war, the notion persists that Pakistan is fighting an American war, a view that will be harder to dispute following reports that the attack on Waziristan is being assisted by US drone surveillance (3).

According to the journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, the military has again taken a gamble marching into South Waziristan “as it is highly unlikely to eliminate the militant threat. Indeed, the past seven or so years have shown that after any operation against militants, the militants have always gained from the situation”. Already the Taliban are regrouping in Swat, and “it is likely that by the time the snow chokes major supply routes, the Taliban will have seized all lost ground” (4). Yet the media and western commentators remain sanguine.

The day the rockets hit Hayatabad the featured article on Foreign Policy magazine’s AfPak Channel was headlined “Everything’s coming up roses in Pakistan”. The attack was attributed to Mangal Bagh Afridi, leader of the banned Lashkar-e-Islam and a former ally of the government who not long ago was credited with driving out fugitives and petty criminals and providing protection to Nato convoys. Alliances remain transient, yet another reason to refrain from arming militias to fight proxy wars. The morning after the rockets I walked to the local market to buy tanoori bread. Once sold for Rs 2, it now sells for Rs 15. Wages have stagnated and inflation and unemployment are high. On the street there was no talk of the threat to lives. Everyone complained about the impossible cost of living.

My Father, the Terrorist

A son of Osama bin Laden paints an intimate portrait of the man who would become the world’s most infamous terrorist.

Excerpted from Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World, by Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, published this month by St. Martin’s Press;

Since the time I could observe and reason, I have mainly known my father to be composed, no matter what might be happening. That’s because he believes that everything of earthly life is in the hands of God. It is difficult, therefore, for me to imagine that he became so excited when my mother told him I was about to be born that he momentarily misplaced his keys.

After a frantic search, I’m told he settled my mother hastily in the car before spinning off at a reckless speed. Luckily he had recently purchased a new automobile, the latest Mercedes, because on that day he tested all its working parts. I’ve been told it was golden in color, something so beautiful that I imagine the vehicle as a golden carriage tearing through the wide palm-tree-lined boulevards of Jeddah, Saudia Arabia.

Within a short while after that chaotic journey, I made my appearance, becoming the fourth child born to my parents.

Iwas only one of many in a chain of strong personalities in our bin Laden family. My father, although quiet-natured in many ways, has always been a man that no other man can control. My paternal grandfather, Mohammed Awad bin Laden, was also quite famous for his strength of character. After the premature death of his father, who left behind a grieving widow and four young children, Grandfather bin Laden sought his fortune without a clue as to where he would end up. He was the eldest at 11 years.

Since Yemen offered few possibilities in those days, my grandfather bravely turned his back on the only land and the only people he had ever known, taking his younger brother, Abdullah, with him to join one of the many camel caravans trekking through the area.

After traveling through the dusty villages and towns of Yemen, they arrived at the port of Aden. From there they sailed a short distance across the Gulf of Aden to Somalia. In Somalia, the two bin Laden boys were employed by a cruel taskmaster, known for his furious outbursts. One day he became so annoyed at my grandfather that he hit him on the head with a heavy stick.

The injury resulted in the loss of sight in one eye. My grandfather and uncle were forced to return to their village until his recovery. The following year they set out once again, this time traveling in the opposite direction, north to Saudi Arabia. I’m sure they were eager to stop at many outposts, but nothing seemed to have the magic they were seeking. The two boys, young and unlettered, lingered only long enough to earn sufficient money to stave off hunger and to continue what must have seemed an endless journey. Something about Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, appealed to my grandfather, because that walled city on the Red Sea marked the end of their arduous voyage.

Grandfather bin Laden was poor yet he was full of energy and determination. He felt no shame in tackling any honest labor. Jeddah was the ideal place for such a character, for the city and the country were at an economic turning point. In the early 1930s, my grandfather’s vigor, strength of mind, and attention to detail caught the attention of an assistant to King Abdul Aziz, the first king of Saudi Arabia, who had recently won many tribal wars and formed a new country.

No one knew it at the time, but Saudi Arabia was set to become one of the richest and most influential countries in the world. After the formation of the kingdom, in 1932, and the discovery of oil, in 1938, the kingdom entered a building boom never before witnessed. When the King wanted a new building or new roadway constructed, he turned to my grandfather. My grandfather’s diligence and honesty so pleased the King that he was put in charge of the most coveted job for a believer, the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

Everyone in our family knows that our Grandfather bin Laden had two main passions: work and women. He was extremely successful in both arenas. His ethic for hard work and total sincerity won him the complete trust of the King. With hard work came financial rewards, which enabled my grandfather to satisfy his second passion: women.

Osama bin Laden at age 16 in 1973, one year before he married his cousin Najwa. Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

In my culture, it is not uncommon for men, particularly the very wealthy and the very poor, to have four wives simultaneously. My grandfather was soon so rich that he not only married four women but continually emptied several of the four marriage positions so that he could fill the vacated slots with new wives.

With so many wives and ex-wives, my grandfather had so many children that it was difficult for him to maintain a relationship with each child. As was the custom, he did give extra attention to the eldest sons, but most of his children were seen only on important occasions. This did not mean he did not follow the progress of his children; he would take time out of his busy schedule to make cursory checks to ensure that his sons were advancing in school or that his daughters married well.

Since my father was not one of the eldest sons, he was not in a position to see his father regularly. In addition, my grandfather’s marriage to my father’s Syrian mother, Grandmother Allia, was brief. After my father’s birth, his mother became pregnant by Grandfather bin Laden for a second time, but when she lost that baby to a miscarriage, she asked her husband for a divorce. For some reason, the divorce was easily given and my Grandmother Allia was free, soon remarried to Muhammad al-Attas and becoming the mother of four more children.

Despite the fact that his stepfather was one of the finest men in Saudi Arabia, my father’s life did not evolve as he wished. Like most children of divorced parents, he felt a loss, for he was no longer as intimately involved with his father’s family. Although my father was never one to complain, it is believed that he keenly felt his lack of status, genuinely suffering from his father’s lack of personal love and care.

I know how my father felt. After all, I’m one of 20 children. I’ve often felt that same lack of attention from my father.

My father was known to everyone in and out of the family as the somber bin Laden boy who became increasingly occupied with religious teachings. As his son, I can attest to the fact that he never changed. He was unfailingly pious, always taking his religion more seriously than most. He never missed prayers. He devoted many hours to the study of the Koran, and to other religious sayings and teachings.

Although most men, regardless of their culture, are tempted by the sight of a different female from the ones in their life, my father was not. In fact, he was known to avert his eyes whenever a woman not of his family came into his view. To keep away from sexual temptation, he believed in early marriages. That’s the reason he made the decision to marry when he was only 17 years old.

I’m pleased that my mother, Najwa Ghanem, who was my father’s first cousin, was his first wife. The position of the first wife is prestigious in my culture, and that prestige is tripled when the first wife is a first cousin and mother of a first son. Rarely does a Muslim man divorce a wife who is a cousin and the mother of the firstborn son. My parents were bound by blood, marriage, and parenthood.

Never did I hear my father raise his voice in anger to my mother. He always seemed very satisfied with her. In fact, when I was very small, there were times that he and my mother secluded themselves in their bedroom, not to be seen by the family for several days, so I know that my father enjoyed my mother’s company.

Omar (holding ball with Abdullah) and his siblings in the bin Laden family sitting room in Jeddah, 1989. Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

Although I cannot simply order my heart to stop loving my father, I do not agree with his behavior. There are times that I feel my heart swell with anger at his actions, which have harmed many people, people he did not know, as well as members of his own family. As the son of Osama bin Laden, I am truly sorry for all the terrible things that have happened, the innocent lives that have been destroyed, the grief that still lingers in many hearts.

My father was not always a man who hated. My father was not always a man hated by others. There was a time when many people spoke of my father with the highest accolades. History shows that he was once loved by many people. Despite our differences, I am not ashamed to admit that I loved my father with the usual passion of a young boy for his father. In fact, when I was a young boy, I worshipped my father, whom I believed to be not only the most brilliant but also the tallest man in the world.

I do have fond memories of my childhood. One early recollection involved teasing about a man having more than one wife. Many times when my father was sitting with his male friends, he would call out for me to come to him. Excited, I would follow the sound of his voice. When I would appear in the room, my father would be smiling at me, before asking, “Omar, how many wives are you going to have?”

Although I was too young to know anything of men and women and marriage, I did know the answer he was seeking. I would hold up four fingers and gleefully shout, “Four! Four! I will have four wives!”

My father and his friends would laugh with delight.

Omar bin Laden, age six. Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

I loved making my father laugh. He laughed so seldom.

Many people found my father to be a genius, particularly when it came to mathematical skills. It was said that his own father was a numerical genius who could add up large columns of numbers in his head.

My father was so well known for the skill that there were times that men would come to our home and ask him to match his wits against a calculator. Sometimes he would agree, and other times not. When he would good-naturedly accept the challenge, I would grow so nervous that I would forget to breathe.

Each time I believed that he would fail the test. Each time I was wrong. We were all staggered that no calculator could equal my father’s remarkable ability, even when presented with the most complicated figures. Father would calculate lengthy and complex figures in his head while his friends struggled to catch up to the math whiz with their calculators. I’m still amazed and have often wondered how any human being could have such a natural ability.

His phenomenal memory fascinated many who knew him. His favorite book was the Koran, so on occasion he would entertain those who would ask by reciting the Koran word for word. I would stand quietly in the background, often with a Koran in my hand, checking his recitation carefully. My father never missed a word. I can tell the truth now, that as I grew in years, I became secretly disappointed. For some strange reason, I wanted my father to miss a word here and there. But he never did.

He once confessed that he had mastered the feat when he was only 10 years old, during a time of great mental turmoil after his own father had been killed in an airplane accident. Whatever the explanation for his rare gift, his champion performances made for many extraordinary moments.

Ihave bad memories, along with the good. Most inexcusable in my mind is that we were kept as virtual prisoners in our home in Jeddah.

There were many dangers lurking for the ones who had become involved in that increasingly complex quagmire that had begun with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan two years before I was born. My father had become such an important figure in the struggle that he had been told that political opponents might kidnap one of his children or even murder members of his family.

Because of such warnings, my father ordered his children to remain inside our home. We were not to be allowed to play outside, even in our own garden. After a few hours of halfhearted play in the hallways, my brothers and I would spend many long hours staring out the apartment windows, longing to join the many children we saw playing on the sidewalks, riding their bikes or skipping rope.

My father’s piety made him strict in other ways. Although we lived in Jeddah—one of the hottest and most humid cities in a country that is known for its hot climate—my father would not allow my mother to turn on the air-conditioning that the contractor had built into the apartment building. Neither would he allow her to use the refrigerator that was standing in the kitchen. My father announced, “Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization.” Therefore, our food spoiled if we did not eat it on the day it was purchased. If my mother requested milk for her toddlers, my father had it delivered straight from cows kept on his family farm for just such a purpose.

My mother was allowed to cook her meals on a gas stove. And the family was permitted to use the electrical lighting, so at least we were not stumbling around in the dark, using wax candles to light dark rooms, or cooking food over an open fire.

My siblings and I hated such impractical directives, although my mother never complained.

My father relented when it came to football—or soccer, as Americas call it. When he brought a ball home, I remember the shock of seeing him smile sweetly when he saw how excited his sons became at the sight of it. He confessed that he had a fondness for playing soccer and would participate in the sport when he had time.

Osama bin Laden in 1984, at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war.Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

You might have guessed by now that my father was not an affectionate man. He never cuddled with me or my brothers. I tried to force him to show affection, and was told that I made a pest of myself. When he was home, I remained near, pulling attention-gaining pranks as frequently as I dared. Nothing sparked his fatherly warmth. In fact, my annoying behavior encouraged him to start carrying his signature cane. As time passed, he began caning me and my brothers for the slightest infraction.

Thankfully, my father had a different attitude when it came to the females in our family. I never heard him shout at his mother, his sisters, my mother, or my sisters. I never saw him strike a woman. He reserved all the harsh treatment for his sons.

I remember one particular time, during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, when he had been away for longer than usual. I was desperate for his attention. He was sitting on the floor quietly studying intricate military maps. I watched him as he carefully laid his map flat on the floor, his earnest face puckered in thought, meticulously studying every hill and valley, mentally preparing for the next military campaign.

I suddenly ran past him, laughing loudly, skipping, striving to capture his attention. He waved me away, saying in a stern voice, “Omar, go out of the room.” I darted out the door and stared at him for a few moments; then, unable to hold back my childlike excitement, I burst back into the room, laughing and skipping, performing a few more tricks. After the fourth or fifth repetition of my bouncing appearance, my exasperated father looked at me and ordered me in his quiet voice, “Omar, go and gather all your brothers. Bring them to me.”

Omar bin Laden with his horse in Jeddah, 2007. Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

I leapt with glee, believing that I had tempted my father away from his military work. I gathered up each of my brothers, speaking rapidly in an excited voice: “Come! Father wants to see us all! Come!”

My father ordered us to stand in a straight line. He stood calmly, watching as we obediently gathered, one hand clutching his wooden cane. I was grinning happily, certain that something very special was about to happen. I stood in restless anticipation, wondering what sort of new game he was about to teach us. Perhaps it was something he played with his soldiers, some of whom I had heard were very young men.

Shame, anguish, and terror surged throughout my body as he raised his cane and began to walk the human line, beating each of his sons in turn. A small lump ballooned in my throat.

My father never raised his soft voice as he reprimanded my brothers, striking them with the cane as his words kept cadence, “You are older than your brother Omar. You are responsible for his bad behavior. I am unable to complete my work because of his badness.”

I was in the greatest anguish when he paused before me. I was very small at the time, and to my childish eyes, he appeared taller than the trees. Despite the fact I had witnessed him beating my brothers, I could not believe that my father was going to strike me with that heavy cane.

But he did.

The indignity was unbearable, yet none of us cried out, knowing that such an emotional display would not have been manly. I waited until he turned his back to walk away before running in the opposite direction. I could not face my brothers, knowing that they were sure to blame me for bringing our father’s cane down on their backs and legs.

Omar and baby sister Fatima at the family home in Jeddah, 1990. Courtesy of Omar bin Laden Family Photo Collection.

During my childhood, I can recall one magical moment when my father held me in his arms. The charmed incident was connected to prayer time.

When Father was home, he commanded his sons to accompany him to the mosque. One day, when we were at the farm, the sound of the Muezzin’s call to the midday prayer rang out. My father in turn called out for us to join him. I was excited, looking upon prayer time as a wonderful excuse to be near my father. On that day I failed to slip on my sandals, which we always kept by the front door, a custom in our country.

At midday, the sands are blistering hot. Running about without sandals, the bare soles of my feet were soon burning. I began jumping about, crying out from the pain. My father stunned me when he leaned his tall figure low and lifted me into his arms.

My mouth went dry from disbelief. Never could I recall being held in my father’s arms. I was instantly happy, leaning in close. My father always used the marvelous incense called Aoud, which has a pleasing musklike scent.

I looked down at my brothers from my favored high perch and grinned, feeling jubilant, like the privileged dwarf atop the giant’s shoulders, seeing beyond what the giant could see.

I was only four or five years old at the time, but I was stocky. My father was tall and thin and, although fit, was not very muscular. Even before we reached the mosque door, I could sense that I had become a heavy burden. He began breathing heavily, and for that I was sorry. Yet I was so proud to be nestled in his capable arms that I clung tightly, wanting to remain in that secure spot forever. Too soon he deposited me on the ground and walked away, leaving me to scramble behind him. My short legs failed to match his impossibly long strides.

Soon my father appeared as elusive as a distant mirage.

India’s armed forces

With a $29bn budget for 2009-10, India’s defence spend is considerable. The armed forces comprise some 1.3 million people. They are made up as follows:
 The Indian Army has 1.1 million active personnel. It counts 4,000 tanks of varying age, 2,800 armoured cars, 12,000 artillery pieces of all calibres, 150 transport helicopters, 3,500 ground-to-air missiles, 2,300 anti-aircraft guns.

Demands of somali pirates more Reasonable you think

So yeah, about those scary black pirates who've stormed our poor calm capitalist waters. Yeah, um, they're trying to tell you that your toxic waste is all up in their business down in Somalia.
Oh silly American media, you forgot that part! You only told me about the scary black men stealing booty.

How is it I have to go to "terrorist" news source, Al Jazeera, to find out that these "pirates" have much more depth to their attacks than what is immediately visible?

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste.

The ransom demand is a means of "reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years", Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirates, based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, said.

"The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas."

The pirates are holding the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware, off Somalia's northern coast.

According to the International Maritime Bureau, 61 attacks by pirates have been reported since the start of the year.

While money is the primary objective of the hijackings, claims of the continued environmental destruction off Somalia's coast have been largely ignored by the regions's maritime authorities.

Now for the juicy part...

"Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there," he said.

"European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne.

"And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it."

Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments.

You know, I get tired of that nonsensical public mentality that is only capable of understanding criminal-like activities as undeniably evil. Can't it be the case that people are forced into criminal activities when they are being consistently beaten down? Can't some people steal a ship to get some leverage in their demands for basic human rights like clean water for their peoples?

When the world has turned its back on you and shat all over your water, it makes sense that your only option is to fight back by any means necessary.

Their martyrs, our heroes

The west also has jihad

Armies and guerrilla movements both deploy suicide missions, and both sides believe in a shared culture of heroic sacrifice. The difference between a ‘just war’ and terrorist targeting of civilians has been blurred for a long time

by John Feffer

The actor Will Smith is no one’s image of a suicide bomber. With his boyish face, he has often played comic roles. Even as the last man on earth in I Am Legend, he retains a wisecracking, ironic demeanour. And yet, surrounded by a horde of hyperactive vampires at the end of that film, Smith clasps a live grenade to his chest and throws himself at the enemy in a final burst of heroic sacrifice.

Wait a second: surely that wasn’t a suicide bombing. Will Smith wasn’t reciting suras from the Koran. He wasn’t sporting one of those rising sun headbands that the Japanese kamikaze wore for their suicide missions. He wasn’t playing a religious fanatic or a political extremist. Will Smith was the hero of the film. So how could he be a suicide bomber? After all, he’s one of us, isn’t he?

As it happens, we have our suicide bombers too. “We” are the powerful, developed countries, the ones with an overriding concern for individual liberties and individual lives. “We” form a moral archipelago that encompasses the United States, Europe, Israel, present-day Japan, and occasionally Russia. Whether in real war stories or inspiring vignettes served up in fiction and movies, our lore is full of heroes who sacrifice themselves for motherland, democracy, or simply their band of brothers. Admittedly, these men weren’t expecting 72 virgins in paradise and they didn’t make film records of their last moments, but our suicidal heroes generally have received just as much praise and recognition as “their” martyrs.

The scholarly work on suicide bombers is large and growing. Most of these studies focus on why those other people do such terrible things, sometimes against their own compatriots, but mainly against us. According to the popular view, Shia or Tamil or Chechen suicide martyrs have a fundamentally different attitude toward life and death.

If, however, we have our own rich tradition of suicide bombers – and our own unfortunate tendency to kill civilians in our military campaigns – how different can these attitudes really be?

In America’s first war against Islam, we were the ones who introduced the use of suicide bombers. Indeed, the American seamen who perished in the incident were among the US military’s first missing in action.

It was 4 September 1804. The United States was at war with the Barbary pirates along the North African coast. The US Navy was desperate to penetrate the enemy defences. Commodore Edward Preble, who headed up the Third Mediterranean Squadron, chose an unusual stratagem: sending a booby-trapped USS Intrepid into the bay at Tripoli, one of the Barbary states of the Ottoman empire, to blow up as many of the enemy’s ships as possible. US sailors packed 10,000 pounds of gunpowder into the boat along with 150 shells.

When Lieutenant Richard Sommers, who commanded the vessel, addressed his crew on the eve of the mission, a midshipman recorded his words: “‘No man need accompany him, who had not come to the resolution to blow himself up, rather than be captured; and that such was fully his own determination!’ Three cheers was the only reply. The gallant crew rose, as a single man, with the resolution yielding up their lives, sooner than surrender to their enemies: while each stepped forth, and begged as a favour, that he might be permitted to apply the match!” (1).

Yielding their lives

The crew of the boat then guided the Intrepid into the bay at night. So as not to be captured and lose so much valuable gunpowder to the enemy, they chose to blow themselves up with the boat. The explosion didn’t do much damage – at most, one Tripolitan ship went down – but the crew was killed just as surely as the two men who ploughed a ship piled high with explosives into the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden nearly 200 years later.

Despite the failure of the mission, Preble received much praise for his strategies. “A few brave men have been sacrificed, but they could not have fallen in a better cause,” opined a British navy commander. The pope at the time went further: “The American commander, with a small force and in a short space of time, has done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages!”

Preble chose his tactic because his American forces were outgunned. It was a Hail Mary attempt to level the playing field. The bravery of his men and the reaction of his supporters could be easily transposed to the present day, when “fanatics” fighting against similar odds beg to sacrifice themselves for the cause of Islam and garner the praise of at least some of their religious leaders.

Routine celebration

The blowing up of the Intrepid was not the only act of suicidal heroism in US military history. We routinely celebrate the brave sacrifices of soldiers who knowingly give up their lives in order to save their unit or achieve a larger military mission. We commemorate the sacrifice of the defenders of the Alamo, who could have, after all, slunk away to save themselves and fight another day. The poetry of the Civil War is rich in the language of sacrifice. In Phoebe Cary’s poem Ready from 1861, a black sailor, “no slavish soul had he,” volunteers for certain death to push a boat to safety.

The heroic sacrifices of the 20th century are, of course, commemorated in film. Today, you can buy several videos devoted to the “suicide missions” of American soldiers.

Our second world war propaganda films – er, wartime entertainments – often featured brave soldiers facing certain death. In Flying Tigers (1942), for example, pilot Woody Jason anticipates the Japanese kamikaze by several years by flying a plane into a bridge to prevent a cargo train from reaching the enemy. In Bataan (1943), Robert Taylor leads a crew of 13 men in what they know will be the suicidal defence of a critical position against the Japanese. With remarkable sangfroid, the soldiers keep up the fight as they are picked off one by one until only Taylor is left. The film ends with him manning a machine gun against wave upon wave of oncoming Japanese.

Our warrior culture continues to celebrate the heroism of these larger-than-life figures from the second world war by taking real-life stories and turning them into Hollywood-style entertainments. For his series of “war stories” on Fox News, for instance, Oliver North narrates an episode on the Doolittle raid, an all-volunteer mission to bomb Tokyo shortly after Pearl Harbour. Since the bombers didn’t have enough fuel to return to their bases, the 80 pilots committed to what they expected to be a suicide mission. Most of them survived, miraculously, but they had been prepared for the ultimate sacrifice – and that is how they are billed today. “These are the men who restored the confidence of a shaken nation and changed the course of the second world war,” the promotional material for the episode rather grandly reports. Tokyo had the same hopes for its kamikaze pilots a few years later.

America did not, of course, dream up suicide missions. They form a rich vein in the western tradition. In the Bible, Samson sacrificed himself in bringing down the temple on the Philistine leadership, killing more through his death than he did during his life. The Spartans, at Thermopylae, faced down the Persians, knowing that the doomed effort would nevertheless delay the invading army long enough to give the Athenians time to prepare Greek defences. In the first century AD in the Roman province of Judea, Jewish Zealots and Sicarians (“dagger men”) launched suicide missions, mostly against Jewish moderates, to provoke an uprising against Roman rule.

Later, suicide missions played a key role in European history. “Books written in the post-9/11 period tend to place suicide bombings only in the context of Eastern history and limit them to the exotic rebels against modernism,” writes Niccolo Caldararo in an essay on suicide bombers (2). “A study of the late 19th century and early 20th would provide a spate of examples of suicide bombers and assassins in the heart of Europe.” These included various European nationalists, Russian anarchists, and other early practitioners of terrorism.

Given the plethora of suicide missions in the western tradition, it should be difficult to argue that the tactic is unique to Islam or to fundamentalists. Yet some scholars enjoy constructing a restrictive genealogy for such missions that connects the Assassin sect (which went after the great sultan Saladin in the Levant in the 12th century) to Muslim suicide guerrillas of the Philippines (first against the Spanish and then, in the early 20th century, against Americans). They take this genealogy all the way up to more recent suicide campaigns by Hizbullah, Hamas, al-Qaida, and Islamic rebels in the Russian province of Chechnya. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, who used suicide bombers in a profligate fashion, are ordinarily the only major non-Muslim outlier included in this series.

Uniting our suicide attackers and theirs, however, are the reasons behind the missions. Three salient common factors stand out. Firstly, suicidal attacks, including suicide bombings, are a “weapon of the weak,” designed to level the playing field. Secondly, they are usually used against an occupying force. And thirdly, they are cheap and often brutally effective.

We commonly associate suicide missions with terrorists. But states and their armies, when outnumbered, will also launch such missions against their enemies, as Preble did against Tripoli or the Japanese attempted near the end of the second world war. To make up for its technological disadvantages, the Iranian regime sent waves of young volunteers, some unarmed and some reportedly as young as nine years old, against the then-US-backed Iraqi army in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

‘Frankenstein monsters’

Non-state actors are even more prone to launch suicide missions against occupying forces. Remove the occupying force, as Robert Pape argues in his groundbreaking book on suicide bombers, Dying to Win (Random House, 2006), and the suicide missions disappear. It is not a stretch, then, to conclude that we, the occupiers (the US, Russia, Israel), through our actions, have played a significant part in fomenting the very suicide missions that we now find so alien and incomprehensible in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

The archetypal modern suicide bomber first emerged in Lebanon in the early 1980s, a response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of the country. “The Shiite suicide bomber,” writes Mike Davis in his book on the history of the car bomb, Buda’s Wagon, “was largely a Frankenstein monster of [Israeli defence minister] Ariel Sharon’s deliberate creation” (3). Not only did US and Israeli occupation policies create the conditions that gave birth to these missions, but the United States even trained some of the perpetrators. The US funded Pakistan’s intelligence service to run a veritable insurgency training school that processed 35,000 foreign Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Charlie Wilson’s War, the book and movie that celebrated US assistance to the mujihadeen, could be subtitled: Suicide Bombers We Have Known and Funded.

Finally, the technique “works”. Suicide bombers kill 12 times more people per incident than conventional terrorism, national security specialist Mohammed Hafez points out. The US military has often publicised the “precision” of its airborne weaponry, of its “smart” bombs and missiles. But in truth, suicide bombers are the “smartest” bombers because they can zero in on their target in a way no missile can – from close up – and so make last-minute corrections for accuracy. In addition, by blasting themselves to smithereens, suicide bombers can’t give away any information about their organisation or its methods after the act, thus preserving the security of the group. You can’t argue with success, however bloodstained it might be. Only when the tactic itself becomes less effective or counterproductive, does it recede into the background, as seems to be the case today among armed Palestinian groups.

Individual motives for becoming a suicide bomber or attacker have, when studied, proved to be surprisingly diverse. We tend to ascribe heroism to our soldiers when, against the odds, they sacrifice themselves for us, while we assume a glassy-eyed fanaticism on the part of those who go up against us. But close studies of suicide bombers suggest that they are generally not crazy, nor – another popular explanation – just acting out of abysmal poverty or economic desperation (though, as in the case of the sole surviving Mumbai suicide attacker put on trial in India recently, this seems to have been the motivation). “Not only do they generally not have economic problems, but most of the suicide bombers also do not have an emotional disturbance that prevents them from differentiating between reality and imagination,” writes Anat Berko in her careful analysis of the topic, The Path to Paradise (Potomac Books, 2009). Despite suggestions from Iraqi and US officials that suicide bombers in Iraq have been coerced into participating in their missions, scholars have yet to record such cases.

A global warrior ethic

Perhaps, however, this reflects a narrow understanding of coercion. After all, our soldiers are indoctrinated into a culture of heroic sacrifice just as are the suicide bombers of Hamas. The indoctrination doesn’t always work: scores of US soldiers go AWOL or join the peace movement just as some suicide bombers give up at the last minute. But the basic-training techniques of instilling the instinct to kill, the readiness to follow orders, and a willingness to sacrifice one’s life are part of the warrior ethic everywhere.

Suicide missions are, then, a military technique that armies use when outmatched and that guerrilla movements use, especially in occupied countries, to achieve specific objectives. Those who volunteer for such missions, whether in Iraq today or on board the Intrepid in 1804, are usually placing a larger goal – liberty, national self-determination, ethnic or religious survival – above their own lives.

But wait: surely I’m not equating soldiers going on suicide missions against other soldiers with terrorists who blow up civilians in a public place. Indeed, these are two distinct categories. And yet much has happened in the history of modern warfare – in which civilians have increasingly become the victims of combat – to blur these distinctions.

The conventional picture of today’s suicide bomber is a young man or woman, usually of Arab extraction, who makes a video proclamation of faith, straps on a vest of high explosives, and detonates him or herself in a crowded pizzeria, bus, marketplace, mosque or church. But we must expand this picture. The 11 September hijackers targeted high-profile locations, including a military target, the Pentagon. Hizbullah’s suicidal truck driver destroyed the US Marine barracks in Beirut on 23 October 1983, killing 241 US soldiers. Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, a female Tamil suicide bomber, assassinated Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Suicide bombers, in other words, have targeted civilians, military installations, non-military sites of great significance, and political leaders. In suicide attacks, Hizbullah, Tamil Tiger and Chechen suicide bombers have generally focused on military and police targets: 88%, 71%, and 61% of the time, respectively. Hamas, on the other hand, has largely targeted civilians (74% of the time). Sometimes, in response to public opinion, such movements will shift focus – and targets. After a 1996 attack killed 91 civilians and created a serious image problem, the Tamil Tigers deliberately began choosing military, police and government targets for their suicide attacks. “We don’t go after kids in Pizza Hut,” one Tiger leader told researcher Mia Bloom, referring to a Hamas attack on a Sbarro outlet in Jerusalem that killed 15 civilians in 2001.

Civilians in the firing line

We have been conditioned into thinking of suicide bombers as targeting civilians and so putting themselves beyond the established conventions of war. As it happens, however, the nature of war has changed in our time. In the 20th century, armies began to target civilians as a way of destroying the will of the population, and so bringing down the leadership of the enemy country. Japanese atrocities in China in the 1930s, the Nazi air war against Britain in the second world war, Allied fire bombings of German and Japanese cities, the nuclear attacks against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US carpet bombing in Cambodia and Laos, and the targeted assassinations of the Phoenix programme during the Vietnam war, Russian depredations in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the tremendous civilian casualties during the Iraq war: all this has made the idea of conventional armies clashing in an area far from civilian life a quaint legacy of the past.

Terrorist attacks against civilians, particularly 11 September, prompted military historian Caleb Carr to back the Bush administration’s declaration of a war against terror. “War can only be answered with war,” he wrote in his best-selling The Lessons of Terror (4). “And it is incumbent on us to devise a style of war more imaginative, more decisive, and yet more humane than anything terrorists can contrive.” This more imaginative, decisive, and humane style of war has, in fact, consisted of stepped-up aerial bombing, beefed-up Special Forces (to, in part, carry out targeted assassinations globally), and recently, the widespread use of unmanned aerial drones like the Predator and the Reaper, both in the American arsenal and in 24/7 use today over the Pakistani tribal borderlands. “Predators can become a modern army’s answer to the suicide bomber,” Carr wrote.

Carr’s argument is revealing. As the US military and Washington see it, the ideal use of Predator or Reaper drones, armed as they are with Hellfire missiles, is to pick off terrorist leaders; in other words, a mirror image of what that Tamil Tiger suicide bomber (who picked off the Indian prime minister) did somewhat more cost-effectively. According to Carr, such a strategy with our robot planes is an effective and legitimate military tactic. In reality, though, such drone attacks regularly result in significant civilian casualties, usually referred to as “collateral damage”. According to researcher Daniel Byman, the drones kill 10 civilians for every suspected militant. As Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com writes, “In Pakistan, a war of machine assassins is visibly provoking terror (and terrorism), as well as anger and hatred among people who are by no means fundamentalists. It is part of a larger destabilisation of the country.” So, the dichotomy between a “just war”, or even simply a war of any sort, and the unjust, brutal targeting of civilians by terrorists has long been blurring, thanks to the constant civilian casualties that now result from conventional war-fighting and the narrow military targets of many terrorist organisations.

We have our suicide bombers – we call them heroes. We have our culture of indoctrination – we call it basic training. We kill civilians – we call it collateral damage.

Is this, then, the moral relativism that so outrages conservatives? Of course not. I’ve been drawing these comparisons not to excuse the actions of suicide bombers, but to point out the hypocrisy of our black-and-white depictions of our noble efforts and their barbarous acts, of our worthy goals and their despicable ends. We – the inhabitants of an archipelago of supposedly enlightened warfare – have been indoctrinated to view the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a legitimate military target and 11 September as a heinous crime against humanity. We have been trained to see acts like the attack in Tripoli as American heroism and the USS Cole attack as rank barbarism. Explosive vests are a sign of extremism; Predator missiles, of advanced sensibility.

Time to open our eyes

It would be far better if we opened our eyes when it came to our own world and looked at what we were actually doing. Yes, “they” sometimes have dismaying cults of sacrifice and martyrdom, but we do too. And who is to say that ending occupation is any less noble than making the world free for democracy? Will Smith, in I Am Legend, was willing to sacrifice himself to end the occupation of vampires. We should realise that our soldiers in the countries we now occupy may look no less menacing and unintelligible than those obviously malevolent, science-fiction creatures. And the presence of our occupying soldiers sometimes inspires similar, Will Smith-like acts of desperation and, dare I say it, courage.

The fact is: were we to end our occupation policies, we would go a long way toward eliminating “their” suicide bombers. But when and how will we end our own cult of martyrdom?

Starts with candy, ends in napalm

A war that can’t be won

by Serge Halimi

Barack Obama once described the operations in Afghanistan as a “necessary war”. That war has lasted eight years and General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the US forces there, appointed by Obama, is urging him to deploy 40,000 more troops.

In Indochina, the US supported corrupt and illegitimate puppet governments, to no avail. In Afghanistan, Britain and the Soviet Union failed to subdue the country, despite all their efforts. US military losses have been relatively small (880 since 2001, compared with 1,200 a month in Vietnam in 1968) and anti-war protests have been low-key, but have the western armies any chance of winning, lost in mountains, surrounded by drug traffickers (1), and suspected of crusading against Islam?

The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner still hopes to “win hearts and minds with a bullet-proof vest” (2) and McChrystal assures the world that “the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents but to protect the population” (3). Apart from their cynicism, these statements are based on a common assumption that social development can be combined with military operations in a country where it is impossible to distinguish between insurgents and civilians. In Vietnam, the US journalist Andrew Kopkind summed up this kind of “counter-insurgency” in 1966 as “candy in the morning, napalm in the afternoon”.

Washington appreciated the strength of Afghan nationalist and religious forces when, with American aid, they drained the Soviet Union. The US may have no hope of decisively beating them now, but it would like to weaken the loose links between the Taliban and al-Qaida militants (4). After all, Washington’s reason for deploying troops and drones in central Asia following the attacks on 11 September 2001 was to destroy al-Qaida, not to secure an education for Afghan girls.

If Obama, the latest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, resists the neoconservative call for military escalation, he will have to explain to the US public that it is rarely possible to secure happiness by bombing the people; that there are now only a handful of Osama bin Laden’s followers in Afghanistan; and that US security will not be threatened if an understanding is reached with the less extremist wing of the Taliban (see Culture wars in Afghanistan). Russia, China, India and Pakistan have no interest in perpetuating this serious regional tension and might help to arrange a negotiated settlement. To sacrifice a life for “democracy” in a foreign country is a challenge, but to die for Hamid Karzai? And to do so when General McChrystal admits that the “mayor of Kabul”, hanging on to office by electoral fraud, has actually managed to make many Afghans feel “nostalgic for the security and justice Taliban rule provided”.

These questions seem to be of no concern to European leaders, although 31,000 British, German, French, Italian and other European troops are fighting alongside the US forces. Now, more than ever, Nato decisions are taken in Washington. In Paris, President Sarkozy recently announced that France “will not send one soldier more”, and then added: “Is it necessary to stay in Afghanistan? I say yes. And to stay to win” (5). Buried in a two-page interview, his statement attracted no comment, perhaps the kindest